The Secret of Long Life? Being Bi and Non-Monoga-Goose

The internet – and the tabloids – have at last taken a bisexual polyamorist to their heart. It took a few clinching factors though. First, he’s dead. Second, he lived a surprisingly long life. Third he had long-term stable relationships and helped his partners raise a host of children – more than seventy. Fourth, and perhaps most important, he was a goose. If he wasn’t, the papers would be spitting feathers about all that child benefit.

Not just any polyamorous goose either but upwardly mobile in his love life – as he spent half his life with two swans.

A goose, who spent his final days at a bird sanctuary at Waikanae – a small town on the North Island of New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast – Thomas had lived to around forty (getting on for twice the lifespan of the average goose). His sight deteriorated from an early age and he was blind most of the time and inseparable from a black swan, Henry. When they turned 25 and Henry met a female swan, Henrietta, along came the cygnets – a total of 68 – but it wasn’t the end for Thomas and Henry.

Henry died aged 30 and it seems less clear whether Thomas and Henrietta were really an item, as she abandoned him and found a new swan to love. The last decade of Thomas’ life brought love and goslings with a female goose – but she left him for another guy.

If he were still alive we could ask – was it the bisexuality or the polyamory that accounted for his long lifespan? One honk for “yes”…